Sunday, August 21, 2016

James Baker to Yitzhak Shamir, August 1991: Too Much is at Stake to Allow the Attempted Coup in Russia to Disrupt the Peace Process

This message from US Secretary of State Baker was delivered to Israeli Prime
Minister Shamir on 20 August 1991, at the height of the crisis in the Soviet
Union. At that moment no-one knew whether President Mikhail Gorbachev was alive or dead, and whether the attempted coup by Communist hard-liners would succeed. 25 years
later we know that the coup's failure led to the fall of the regime and the rapid breakup of the Soviet Union.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the opposition to the coup, next to a tank in Moscow
Wikipedia

1991 was also a fateful year for the Middle East. A short time
before, at the end of July, Gorbachev and President George H. W. Bush had met
in Moscow to sign a historic agreement on arms limitation. They also announced
that the USA and the USSR would issue invitations to an international peace
conference on the Middle East in October 1991. Soviet Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh
announced that the USSR would offer Israel the restoration of full diplomatic
relations if it agreed to come to the conference.

But Shamir still hesitated. Israeli governments had regarded peace
conferences with suspicion since the failure of the 1949 Lausanne conference.
They feared that Israel would be isolated and that the Arab states would be
forced to line up with extreme positions. However, after
the Yom Kippur war Israel agreed to take part in the Geneva conference after
receiving assurances from the Americans that they would support its stand,
and the conference would serve as no more than a backdrop for bilateral
negotiations. The Geneva conference met on 21 December
1973, and after the opening session it was suspended and never met again.

Since the end of the first Gulf War on 28 February 1991, the US
Administration was determined to bring about peace talks between Israel and the
Arabs, including the Palestinians. After the defeat of Saddam Hussein, US
prestige was at its height, and the Administration wanted to fulfil promises made to its Arab allies, especially Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia,
to renew the negotiations with Israel. The Americans accepted Israel's proposal
for a two track process – bilateral talks with the Palestinians, and direct
talks with the Arab states as Israel wanted, and proposed the framework of an
international conference. PLO influence was greatly weakened by its support for
Saddam Hussein, and the Americans believed they could get it to acquiesce in a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, to include residents of the West Bank and Gaza acceptable to Israel.

Israel accepted this plan, but did not expect it would succeed.
However, on 14 July 1991 Hafez-al Assad agreed that Syria would take part in the conference. The pressure on Shamir was building up. After the Moscow summit the
Americans offered Israel another sweetener – revocation of UN Resolution 3379, which had declared Zionism a form of
racism, in order to answer its objections to UN involvement in the
conference. Baker telephoned Shamir and promised a US initiative to revoke
the resolution. After Baker arrived on Jerusalem and promised more assurances Shamir agreed on 1 August that Israel would come to the conference, subject to an agreed
formula on Palestinian representation.

On 4 August Baker met with Shamir, Foreign Minister David Levy and
Defence Minister Moshe Arens in Jerusalem. Shamir, under pressure from Likud members led by Ariel Sharon who opposed the conference, wanted to bring
the understandings to the government. Baker repeated his assurances,
although he also said that the US would not retract from the policy it had laid
down in the past on issues such as settlements.

The government approved the proposals. Now the ball was in the
Palestinians' court. While efforts continued to persuade them to form a
delegation acceptable to Israel, the crisis in Moscow came to a head. Baker hastened
to send Shamir a message through the US ambassador to assure him "of the
President's and my determination" to keep on working for the goal of peace.
"Too much is at stake to allow the progress we have achieved to
dissipate."